what’s the physical meaning of mathematical operations?

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Let’s say you have a division. You’ve got 3/2, where 3 might be acres and 2 might be brothers so from there you could deduce that the division just means that the 3 acres of land will be distributed between two brothers. Summation and multiplication are quite straight forward, but what the hell does one do with multiplication and exponentiation? If I got 20 N-m of torque, wtf does the multiplication tells me there? If something follows a square root?

Please feel free to add any other operations to these. Thanks!

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Multiplication: Each of x brothers brings y beers to the family reunion. You have x*y beers total.

Square root: A field x square feet in area has 4 equal sides. Each side is sqrt(x) long.

Exponentiation: You are putting together an outfit that needs x types of clothing (pants, shirt, hat, etc.) You have y options for each type of clothing. There are y^x unique outfits you can wear.

The trick is that we often find ourselves in situations that require various mathematical operations to properly express. Just work backwards from there.

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